Gift of sleep e-book or SOS??

I haven't tried gift of sleep but I have tried SOS.

Below are some tippers for common things that folks sometimes forget, which messes up SOS (might give you some ideas):
- use a comforter with your smell
- if bub isn't sleepy at the scheduled times try moving up a routine early (larger babies move through them faster). If bub isn't tired enough they may only sleep one cycle. (half hour or so)
- dont use sleep aids (feeding to sleep, dummy, rocking etc). These can cause sleep association problems and wakings after a sleep cycle/through the night.
- if you can follow the self settling advice (a bit of crying) try to stick it out for 1-2 days. You may just have a new bub afterwards...
- consider upping food (eg adding protein, going to 3 meals per day). If bub isn't full bub won't sleep properly.
- it can take up to 1 week for changes to routines to settle down. Whinging might last the first few days depending.

Hi OP.
I used gift of sleep 3months ago when DD was 8 months old. The first night was hard but she fell asleep after 2 hrs. She used to wake every 1-2 hrs every night from the day she was born!! You can imagine my sanity! Anyway, the 1st night she woke 3 times and 2nd night she took 15 min to fall asleep and woke up twice!! Since than she falld asleep on her on and will maybe wake up once for a feed and rest of the time gives a sleepy,whingy cry and falls back to sleep. she was also used to being fed and rocked to sleep.
I had tried sleep school and no cry sleep solution and neither helped. didnot want to try tizzie hall. gift of sleep is alot more gentle and clearly states its for babys above 6 months. I didnt do the knocking, that scared her, instead tried shusshing and tapping on the wall, that worked better.
They have a facebook page which the authors gives suggestions.
Goodluck! PM me if you want anymore info!

The Following User Says Thank You to OS&N For This Useful Post:

Sorry i forgot to come back on here like i saud i would to let you know how I went with GOS! well.... Didnot work for me, but only because its about weaning bub off EVERYTHING cold turkey and we had ALOT of sleep problems to fix. Im going to take a more gradual aoproach from now on. I only did one night of GOS and ended up feeding her to sleep. Dd settles beautifully during the day but not at night, and between the knocking, shhhhing and resettling she was beside herself! Literally shaking and stiff as a board when I ended all the madness after 1 hour. All babies are different though and while my dd can work herself into a state quickly, yours might not.. So give it a go!As for me, the first thing im fixing is dd's bedtime. She hasnt had one up until this week.(shes 11 months) Lately she was coming to bed with me at around 10-10.30 and until that time shed just have little catnaps in the evening. Tonight was night 3 of feeding her to sleep in my bed at 7:30pm. Shes waking uo eVen mOre than she was before but im hoping thats her body clock adjusting. Once shes used to this bedtime ill work on settling her back to sleep without the boob, and once we're down to one feed a night ill work on getting her out of the wrap then into her own bed. So i foresee my gradual method may end some time round the year 2015 lol!

DD used to be in bed everynight at 10:30pm and sleep through till 8 every night since she was born. When she was just over three months DP work changed and started moving us around so she went into our bed for a month then we were back home and I did SOS alone as DP was still working away. We then went away again and stayed with DP and instead of grizzly to sleep, she was screaming so DP wouldn't have it. We haven't been in our own place since April and DD can certainly work herself up quickly. She doesn't sleep in the day unless I walk her in the pram so I try to do that for an hour, if we go in the car shes asleep before we are out the drive, I let her sleep pn my bob for an hour and a half. I don't think I could do SOS now as as soon as I put her down shes up on her feet, trembling and screaming out mummy with tears ********* down her face and grabbing at me. I hate seeing her upset and thats why I thought GOS as I don't have to stand there for 46 minutes with her screaming at me like that. I figured I could just stand at the door facing away to do the knocking and sshhing as seeing her like this pretty much reduces me to tears. I have a theory that shes gone like this as everyone and everything has changed except for me, we've been in 5 different houses filled with different people in just over 4 months and DP works 12 hour days, 6 days a week so I'm the only constant. Shes even screaming when awake if she can't see me. Its tiring!
I hope she settles like your LO OS&N, but I'm not holding my breath, I know shes going to struggle. We are in a mining area so housing bin scarse but DP and I agreed we will wait to try until we have a place of our own and not leave for a month.

SOS worked for me but its hard to give specific advice without knowing the details of what parts you are and aren't following, and what difficulties you are having.

That being said: SOS probably won't work if you are feeding bub to sleep, as this is a major disruptor to self settling. You really have to stick to the nap times as best of you can so bub is the right level of tiredness at nap time.

Sorry ladies I never updated on our progress. In September we got our own place and dd was all settled within the month. We did a mixture of SOS and GOS. I took the routine from SOS and used GOS to put her down, the knocking frightened her so we did it without that. It was a Very very tiring first few days though! The first night it took 2 1/2 hours with me going in and resettling a few times, the second night I spent from 7pm till 2am ssshhing and resettling before she fell asleep and the third and fourth nights she was out in under half an hour. Now she will have a little sing to herself when I put her down and falls asleep like that. It was and up to this date the hardest thing I've had to deal with as a parent! I felt like the worst person in the world and if I didn't have my fiancé and my brother and his wife making me stay out of her room we'd probably still be feeding to sleep!! She's honestly such a different girl since we did it, she started eating solids properly and started crawling and standing by herself within the month after! I guess you just have to find what works for you, get the good support team to help you through and be firm! I'm so happy we did! It did take a few moths later for her to stop sleeping in the pram in the day though, we still did the routines but in the day if we went anywhere near the cot she'd shake and tremble and go into hysterics so I didn't mind pushing her for an hour to get her to sleep, it was exercise for me and she'd be asleep for up to 2 hours, now she has each sleep in the cot and if we go somewhere I just keep the bedtime routine exactly the same and she'll go to bed as easy as she does at home. Sorry for the novel!

I am not able to send you a private message, but would it be possible to have you send me copy of the gift of sleep, please? I know this is an old post, but here's hoping.

Nordmet at hotmail dot com

thanks

Originally Posted by ilovehats

I have read gift of sleep but didn't like the techniques suggested. I found it odd to suggest knocking loudly outside the door would settle a baby, so didn't try it. I'm happy to try and send it to you if you - pm me if you want it.

As I understand it there will be crying with either method. If you DD is already feeling anxious I wouldn't be trying CC at the moment.

I haven't read Gift of Sleep but I read SOS, Gina Ford and this book "12 Hours Sleep by 12 Weeks Old" and the latter worked a treat and was by far the easiest to follow (and it worked - DD started sleeping 12 hours from 11 weeks).

I'm not sure how good it is with breastfeeding as I FF'd but I do know she tries to cover BFing routines too

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